8 Reasons Women Should Lift Heavier Weights

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013CHERISEMCCLIMANS  EXERCISES 2 COMMENTS

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I LOVE lifting weights. It’s probably my favorite form of exercise, I’m so not a “I love running and all things cardio!” type of girl. But whenever I try to talk to a girl friend of mine into lifting weights with me, the response is always the same, “eh… I don’t know… lifting weights isn’t really my thing, I want to look like a girl not like a man.” haha! Okay, let me set one thing straight (and if you look on any other weight lifting page it will tell you the same thing), lifting heavy weights will not make you bulky! The women you see who look like men, with the grossly large muscles, in general are taking testosterone supplements and possibly steroids in order to look that way. Don’t take those things and you wont look that way!

In fact you will look slim, sleek and toned. Instead of being skinny fat – you know where you look ok in clothes because you’re thin, but naked you have no tone – you will be toned and look amazing in the nude.

Okay so you want reasons to lift heavy weights instead of tiny dinky ones?

1. It builds muscle faster.

While lifting tiny dinky weights can increase your endurance, it’s nothing more than weighted cardio. To build real muscle you need to lift heavy weights. You want to lift the heaviest weight you can lift for 8-12 reps, if you can’t lift 8 reps it’s too heavy if you lift more than 12 reps it’s too light.

2. When you build muscle you burn fat continuously! Instead of cardio which stops working the minute you are finished, weight lifting continues throughout the day. 2 sessions of heavy lifting a week will burn 3% body fat in 10 weeks without cutting calories. You’ll also burn 100 more calories than if you did cardio, even though your heart rate monitor and calorie counter may tell you that the cardio you just did for an hour burned more than weight lifting, throughout at 24 hour period weight lifting will continue to burn calories and end up burning 100 more than the cardio counterparts.

3. In a study from the University of Alabama in Birmingham they showed that dieters who lifted heavy weights lost the same amount of weight as dieters who did just cardio, but all the weight lost by the weight lifters was primarily fat while the cardio queens lost a lot of muscle along with some fat. That equaled smaller clothing sizes for the weight lifters compared to the cardio goers.

4. Lifting weights prevents osteoperosis and can even help build stronger bones.Check out this article which talks about weight training for osteoperosis

5. Women who lift heavy weights lose more belly fat than those who don’t. Weight lifting targets intra-abdominal fat and helps you loose the pooch and enjoy a flat belly faster than cardio and more toned than cardio.

6. Lifting heavy weights makes you feel amazing. Whenever I’m in the gym lifting heavy weights, I feel like a beast, like I can take on the world! A feeling of empowerment, knowing that you aren’t some weakling walking alongside the road and that people may misjudge you and you could prove them wrong. I’m particularly fond of the leg press, women tend to have stronger leg muscles than men do and it was always fun to be able to do more than a guy can.

7. Strengthening your muscles can help with your cardio. If you are still a cardio lover, adding some weight lifting can improve your knees and joints so that your runs are faster and less painful.

8. You’ll reduce your risk of heart diseases and diabetes, “Muscle helps remove glucose and triglycerides from the bloodstream, which reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes, as well as hardening of the arteries,” says Timothy Church, MD, PhD, a preventive medicine expert at Pennington Biomedical Research Center.